Arc Raiders has only been out a day, but it has already surpassed a Steam concurrent peak player count of 264,673, making it one of the biggest extraction shooters ever on Valve’s platform.
Arc Raiders has only been out a day, but it has already surpassed a Steam concurrent peak player count of 264,673, making it one of the biggest extraction shooters ever on Valve’s platform.
It’s hilarious how different people respond to playing it solo. Some people say it’s the tensest thing ever but I’ve also seen a video from an elderly cozy gamer who thought it was the most relaxing thing she’d seen in a while. I’m more in the latter camp, been playing solo since launch and it’s been pretty chill.
Yep. I played solo for the first few hours before friends picked it up. I had a 100% extraction rate over like 10 runs because it seems like 100% of people are not there to fight. They’re just trying to loot and get out. It isn’t worth the risk of dying, especially near the end of a run when you can’t carry anything else anyway.
Playing as a group, it’s probably a 95% chance people won’t talk and just fight. Everyone is in a Discord chat and not using in-game voice and are just anti-social. Occasionally you can extract with other people, but during the raid I don’t think I’ve ever had people be friendly. We even had a team down to one person before and told them they could leave and they still decided to try to kill our three man.
I think it’s the difference between having gear fear and not having gear fear. As someone who comes from Tarkov ARC raiders solo is kind of a walk in the park because gearing up is much easier. Meeting other players is about 50/50, either they start shooting without asking questions or they’re cool after you say “don’t shoot”. I hope this vibe doesn’t die off when the player count drops. Yesterday I had a raid where I met another raider, we agreed to not shoot each other and then impromptu teamed up and took down another team of raiders. We then found a third raider and the three of us extracted together. It’s pretty rare to team in up Tarkov because most people shoot first and ask questions later.
But I can see how it’s absolutely stressful for some people because gear fear makes you think the stakes are much higher than they really are.
Unless people have been playing an insane amount since release, I don’t think anyone’s really going out into a raid with the equivalent of late wipe geared up Tarkov equipment. I’ve barely seen anyone tossing out wolfpacks, I haven’t seen anyone using a hullcracker or an equalizer, and I haven’t taking any damage from a bettina yet. And has anyone seen a Jupiter in game?
All in all I agree with you though, this definitely is t Tarkov, and the people who are stressed are probably pretty new to the whole extraction shooter thing. I was running some raids with a finals friend and an old Tarkov mate, and we were just vibing dude. Super chill. And yeah anything I go in with right now I can pretty easily recraft in an instant. The tiered crafting mechanics seem way more intuitive than in Tarkov. I really like how the damage is governed by the weapon, not the bullet type. Losing a gun might sting for a second, but at least I’m not micromanaging my ap rounds and shit. Or holy fuck I forgot about this, stacking mags with ap at the top and staggering as you get through the 30. Although putting tracers as the last 5 like I did irl was always fun.
I think both sides make sense here. If you shoot at everything that moves and refuse to cooperate it can be a hell of a ride. But if you focus on looting and are willing to socialize it can be almost a cozy experience. It reminds me of Team Fortress 2 where players would sometimes just make up their own rules mid game and turn everything on it‘s head.
See that’s interesting because it’s more cozy for me when I shoot on sight and more tense for me when I socialize. I’ve lost loot when I’ve tried talking it out and maybe that stings more because assuming I lose some of those engagements I must have saved more loot than lost when talking.
Idk, it’s the social pressure like in a fictional apocalypse of like “will these humans be friendy or not”, they’re unpredictable. Also I think the map has an effect on friendliness as well. Like Dam had a lot of friendly people but blue gate was like 50/50 at best.
It’s just so cool that the game can change so much from playing solo vs squads.